Escalators

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I once learned, while standing perfectly still and nonetheless traveling upward, that the escalator is one of humanity’s most confident lies. It pretends to be a staircase—solid, dependable, Protestant in its seriousness—but it is actually a machine that eats shoes and has no feelings about it. This is interesting for two reasons. First, we trust it with our bodies. Second, we trust it with our dignity, which it occasionally shreds like a careless god.

The escalator was invented to solve a problem nobody had articulated: the unbearable burden of lifting one foot in front of the other. This does not mean the problem didn’t exist; it only means we had been quietly furious about it for centuries. When the first escalator appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, people reportedly approached it as if it might explode or demand a password. Which, frankly, was sensible. Any device that moves while you don’t is clearly up to something.

Early versions were less “ride” and more “mechanized flirtation with death.” They featured exposed gears, aggressive angles, and the strong suggestion that you should update your will before boarding. People fell. Hats were lost. Children disappeared briefly into the machinery and came back with stories they would never tell correctly again. Progress, as usual, was making its point with bruises.

Today’s escalator is a marvel of refinement. It hums politely. It waits. It pretends to be on your side. And yet, it remains a petty bastard. It knows when you are late. It senses distraction. It has a particular fondness for sandals, shoelaces, and that one wheeled suitcase you swear fits just fine. The escalator is not malicious, exactly—it’s worse than that. It is indifferent, which is the universe’s favorite personality.

There is a specific moment, familiar to anyone who has ever traveled through an airport, when an escalator reaches the top and demands a decision. You must step off. Immediately. Hesitation will not be tolerated. Behind you, a crowd presses forward with the quiet, murderous hope that you will not fuck this up. For half a second, the escalator gives you freedom—then it reclaims it by pushing your heel into the future whether you’re ready or not. This is how time works, by the way. We just don’t usually get handrails.

Some people walk on escalators, which is a little like jogging on a moving sidewalk: technically possible, morally questionable. These people believe efficiency is a personality. They sigh loudly at those who stand still, as if gravity itself has personally disappointed them. Others stand, zoned out, staring into the middle distance where their thoughts go to be unproductive. Both groups are wrong, which is comforting. Humanity is rarely united, but we are remarkably consistent in our failure to agree on basic rules posted clearly on signs.

What fascinates me is how escalators reveal our private negotiations with control. Elevators, at least, have the decency to admit they’re machines. Escalators pretend to be landscapes. They say: relax, I’ve got this. And we do. We surrender. We stand there, motionless, scrolling through tiny glowing rectangles, trusting a set of metal stairs assembled by strangers to deliver us safely to a sandwich. This is faith. Not the cathedral kind, but the everyday kind that keeps civilization duct-taped together.

There is also something faintly absurd about being carried upward by a contraption that could be defeated by a power outage. One minute it’s a symbol of unstoppable progress; the next it’s just a staircase having a nap. People react to a broken escalator with genuine outrage, as if it has betrayed them personally. “It’s just standing there,” they say, furious that it has reverted to its original, perfectly functional form.

So it goes with most of our inventions. We build machines to save time, and then we spend that time being annoyed at them. We automate effort and are shocked—shocked—when the result is not happiness but a slightly faster version of the same old bullshit. The escalator doesn’t care. It will keep moving, or it won’t. Either way, it will be there tomorrow, waiting to carry you upward while you think about nothing in particular.

And maybe that’s the point. For a few seconds, you don’t have to do anything. You just stand there, balanced between floors, letting a machine handle the forward motion of your life. It’s a small mercy, really. Brief, mildly dangerous, occasionally profane—but then again, so is being human.